


Call Me a Sinner, Call Me a Saint

by Aravis39



Category: DCU (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Awkward Sexual Situations, Character Study, Demisexual Clark, Demisexuality, Discussion of non-consensual cloning, F/M, Gen, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Relationship Study, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9971402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aravis39/pseuds/Aravis39
Summary: A kind of character analysis of Clark Kent via his various identities & various relationships. One-Shot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> First fic I'm posting on Ao3 :)

Clark Kent is used to being treated as a stereotype. Almost everyone in his life pegs him into a neat slot-card upon first acquaintance.  
  
He is a lot of things. First, he’d been a son. A miracle. Both to the Kryptonian parents who had saved him and to the Midwestern parents who had saved him and so much more than that.  
  
In his hometown, he’d been a farm boy who saved his classmates from a river and a jock who would’ve saved the football team if he hadn’t quit to “focus on his studies”. (Puberty had made it clear his abilities were advancing so far they could present danger to the other players even passively. Accidents happen.)

 

* * *

 

To Lana, he’d been a friend. At first. For awhile, he thinks there’s something _wrong_ with him, when she would give him looks he ~~couldn’t~~ didn’t return.

When his parents show him the ship, he thinks maybe both the things that are wrong are maybe the same problem: Maybe he’s just not compatible with humans.  
  
But then Lana finds out, and the rift that’d been growing falls away. She’s really coming into her own, the trials of puberty forging an amazing young woman.  
  
That summer, Lana holds his hand while wearing a white tank, open vest, and cutoff shorts. Clark discovers a very new sort of _can’t_.  
  
When they kiss (and it takes a few dates, a few awkward tries), he tries to keep it gentle, but there’s a _//spark//_ that sets his pulse racing. Lana’s is too, and her scent changes.  
  
The kiss deepens. She begins to explore cautiously and that’s good.  
  
Then her hands guides his a little lower and ---  
  
“I might hurt you. Just a little too much pressure and--”  
  
“Okay,” she smiles, her eyes dark and sparkling, “So I’ll lead. You probably don’t know what to do anyway.”  
  
He knows his grin is doofy. And maybe a lot of boys wouldn’t be okay with this or would at least defend their “experience”. But Lana knows him better than that. He’s trusted her with his secrets and he trusts her with this.  
  
When they move further, Clark is nervous. So far, he’s grown more comfortable with his own desire. It’s warm and glowing and a little hot on occasion, but it doesn’t feel dangerous. He’s in control of himself now --- but he still wants Lana to lead.  
  
She’s made jokes about “worst-case” when they’d got here. “Don’t worry, Clark, it’d be an amazing way to go. It’s in my Top 5 Preferred.”  
  
“Yeah, but I’ve been reading a little, and I’m not sure it’s even gonna work.”  
  
It does work, much to Lana’s smug satisfaction.  
  
“How’d you know?” he grumps.  
  
“Your kisses.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“So long as you don’t put in pressure, I could always feel your kisses. It was tingly and firm, but it felt like skin and you felt it too.”  
  
He kisses her right then and there.

 

* * *

 

What he and Lana have is special, but as graduation looms, there are hard talks ahead.  
  
“Lana, what am I to you? I mean, who do you want me to be?”  
  
“You’re my friend, Clark. You’ll always be my friend. If our plan was to settle down here and have a family, then we’ve got what it takes.”  
  
“But we want more.”  
  
“And we aren’t each other’s more. Save your heart for them, Clark.”

 

* * *

 

The notion of “saving your heart” is all good and well. Honestly, he’d though what he felt for Lana was like that, until it was time to grow up.  
  
So he becomes a traveler and a student. He explores and pushes and hones his abilities. He builds an ice fortress and learns his roots.  
  
Finally, he becomes a reporter. And soon after, a hero. A “Superman”. He’s saving the day and saving people and saving Lois Lane.  
  
There’s something about Lois that makes him more comfortable as Superman. Like it’s really part of who he is rather than just a tool to do what he can do.  
  
So it doesn’t bother him too much at first that she’s pegged Clark as a bumbling mess --- because, with her, he’s also that.  
  
After all, he’d been saving his heart but woke up one morning to realize Lois has had it for months and he’d never even realized.  
  
It’s terrifying and vulnerable. Lois is amazing, breath-taking, stubborn, brilliant, beautiful. But she’s also brash and reckless and walking around holding the single most part of himself with nary a clue.  
  
He can’t tell her. To her, Clark is her tag-along sidekick/partner too naive and old-fashioned for the city, a human spell-checker, and --- he’s pretty sure she trusts him. Not with her crazy scoops, always, but with those parts of your personality usually only family with put up with.  
  
He thinks that he likes that trust even more than her use of Superman as her own personal parachute. She trusts Superman with her life, but Clark doesn’t know what he is to her beyond a mysterious, romantic saviour. What she would want him to be. For him, Lois might be everything.  
  
One day, Lois will wake up and find her naive sidekick-partner has stepped out of her card-slots and peg-holes for him. She’ll find herself really looking at him for the first time. What she finds shatters her world but breaks down walls. Moving forward is her first impulse, but the best place for them is probably back at the beginning.  
  
Because this is a man she doesn’t ever want to do without again.

 

* * *

 

 

Superman doesn’t save just Metropolis.  
  
There’s always something happening somewhere. Soon, he’s an American symbol and international icon.  
  
There are others like him. Not alien, most of them, and not quite considered paragons outside their own cities either. But they’re all making a difference.  
  
The first couple times Earth is in danger, he manages alone, but he’s hit his previously-illusive limit.  
  
The next time, he can’t do this alone, but there are others beside him.  
  
The dynamics are awkward. Not in small part due to the others tend to think of him as more. A failsafe solution, maybe. He’s not really sure.  
  
~~Bruce~~ Batman is unnerved by his existence but tries (and occasionally fails) to respect him. Ultimately, he’s most comfortable if he’s assured he’s by far the smartest in the room. There’s an unspoken agreement to let him have that.  
  
Still, over time, their relationship develops dimensions and complexities that shouldn’t work but usually do. Bruce is more comfortable with Clark, and that friendship is what makes their, ahem, professional connection work.

 

* * *

 

Diana tends to fill the gap between Batman and Superman, achieving a balance they don’t quite have on their own.  
  
Sans Gotham’s favored son, he has his own relationship with the Amazon. It lacks the ill-concealed want that Bruce and Di waste so much time smothering.  
  
It’s almost like what he felt for Lana, before they got together. He’d even call it love, in its own way.  
  
He thinks this is what it’s like to have a sister. She’s a warrior by nature and right. He’s a technical pacifist. They chafe and disagree, but loyalty first and foremost.

To her, he’s Kal-El, and he’s never just been Kal-El to anyone. That is, for who he is without biography or schism between his lives. He’s working towards the latter with Lois, but she was the one who helped him find who Clark Kent and Superman are, so finding this part with Di feels right.

 

* * *

 

 

Kara is a paradox. As he is to her, he’s sure. There are so many contradictions. So many land mines.  
  
He’s her baby cousin; but she’s a stranger. She’s the only living link to his origins --- but that was her world. She’s from a more advanced society, but a newcomer to both this world and these new powers.  
  
Honestly, he finds her amazing. She seems to look up to him. He doesn’t want to cast his shadow on her.  
  
It happens anyway.  
  
Still, she starts making her own life for herself --- her ability to adapt is her real superpower.  
  
All in all, he thinks she’s proud of him.  
  
And for him, he’s able to connect to her in a way he’s never going to be able to with anyone else alive.

 

* * *

  
He spoke too soon.  
  
The kids save him. And he’s _there_ and he’s _young_ and he’s **_wrong_**.  
  
No, that’s not---  
  
But there’s a twisting clench in his gut, and his head’s spinning, and he might vomit _because how dare they?_  
  
The League --- Bruce --- expects him to deal with this, but he can’t. Not without wanting to scream and break some formless thing. Not the cl--- not the kid. But something.  
  
It takes him a while to put into words, yet they’re there waiting for him when he finds them: He feels violated. In the full, intimate sense. They took a part of him and manipulated and....  
He thinks he should talk to his parents, but he’s been such an a*hole about the whole thing. He’s not ready.  
  
Diana hasn’t said anything, not to him, but he did hear her talking to Bruce. Telling him “This is a relationship Kal must consent to and define for himself --- or everyone involved will just suffer more.”  
  
He knows he should talk to someone and of course it’s Lois. Tale of the kid’s existence is swapped and speculated about around the bullpen. Lois zeroes in on the way he runs.  
  
“So he’s looked after and Canary’s mentoring him. That’s good,” Lois hmms. “Now we can talk about you.”  
  
“I know I’m---”  
  
“Hold on there, Smallville. I know a platitude when you start one. How ’bout we talk about the fact you were part of bringing a new life into the world without your consent? Or all the other horrible plans they had for the both of you? That some shadowy creeps took your autonomy away and you didn’t even know it?”  
  
Lois’s words cut, but in a good way. Digging things out that he’s not supposed to feel because he’s Superman, and he’s Good, and he’s a hero. THE Hero. He ALWAYS does The Right Thing.  
  
But he hasn’t this time. And there’s someone out there who’s even worse off than him in this situation, and he doesn’t want to ~~save~~ help them.  
  
What a time to pick to be selfish, when it’s at the cost of a near-mirror.  
  
Lois huffs, “Well if I had a kid I wasn’t able to take care of, I know where I’d want them to go --- and it’s not to spend their life on a military base with my dad. My aunt would probably do it, if I couldn’t.  
  
“So you’re gonna give yourself some time. Process and shit. After that, find a chance to meet the kid without all these emotional strings and snarls --- as strangers, y’know. So if you panic and split, you aren’t at least doing any more damage. Once you got that figured, let him meet your parents. Kid’s never gonna have a real childhood, so that means all his formative years are gonna be spent with puberty hormones gunking things up. Let’s let the only people who’ve ever raised a little super-kid do what they do.”  
  
“If I can trust him, that’s probably the best I can do.”  
  
He’s not proud that it takes him six months. Well, the kid’s not even a year old yet. By that metric, he doesn’t think it’s too bad.  
  
There’s no way he could think of the kid --- of Conner --- as a son because that’s not what they are. If his parents have anything to say, he’ll be a little brother.

When he thinks of it like that, he’s actually looking forward to introducing him to Kara next time she drops in from the 31st century.


End file.
